“And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way,” John Steinbeck wrote in “The Grapes of Wrath.”
California’s climate is enjoying a rich spell.
We’ve been blessed with two consecutive wet years. Our reservoirs are mostly full and the horrors of the 2017-2021 drought-fueled wildfire seasons are fading. Yet we can’t let this brief good fortune lull us into complacency. A changing climate means drought and wildfire are always lurking.
The time to prepare is now. We do that by passing Proposition 4 on the November ballot.
The Bay Area economy is significantly vulnerable to climate-related disasters.
Seven of California’s most destructive wildfires burned either directly in the Bay Area or in our immediate vicinity, destroying thousands of homes while filling the sky with toxic smoke. The state’s record-breaking 2020 fire season wiped away emission reductions California made over nearly 20 years. During an 11-year period, exposure to wildfire smoke caused more than 50,000 deaths in California and more than $400 billion in economic impacts.